Basic Books: 1466 books
The Ghosts Of Evolution
Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms
Language: English
Release Date: August 5, 2008
A new vision is sweeping through ecological science: The dense web of dependencies that makes up an ecosystem has gained an added dimension-the dimension of time. Every field, forest, and park is full of living organisms adapted for relationships with creatures that are now extinct. In a vivid narrative,...
Floods, Famines, and Emperors
El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations
Language: English
Release Date: February 10, 2009
In 1999, few people had thought to examine the effects of climate on civilization. Now, due in part to the groundbreaking work of archaeologist Brian Fagan, climate change is a central issue. Revised and updated ten years after its first publication, Floods, Famines and Emperors remains the definitive account of how the world's best-known climate event had an indelible impact on history.
The Big Ratchet
How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis
Language: English
Release Date: September 9, 2014
How an ordinary mammal manipulated nature to become technologically sophisticated city-dwellers--and why our history points to an optimistic future in the face of environmental crisis
Our species long lived on the edge of starvation. Now we produce enough food for all 7 billion of us to eat...
An Obsession With Butterflies
Our Long Love Affair With A Singular Insect
Language: English
Release Date: April 24, 2009
Butterflies have always served as a metaphor for resurrection and transformation, but as Sharman Apt Russell points out in this lyrical meditation, butterflies are above all objects of obsession. She reveals the logic behind our endless fascination with butterflies and introduces us to the legendary...
How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America
Freedom, Politics, and the War on Sex
Language: English
Release Date: July 31, 2008
With a new preface by the author. In the tradition of Backlash and The Morning After, and in a political climate where Roe v. Wade is in serious jeopardy, a young activist reveals that the Pro-Life Movement's real agenda is a war on contraception, family planning, and sexual freedom.
Scienceblind
Why Our Intuitive Theories About the World Are So Often Wrong
Language: English
Release Date: April 25, 2017
"A fascinating, empathetic book" --Wall Street Journal
Humans are born to create theories about the world--unfortunately, we're usually wrong and bad theories keep us from understanding science as it really is
Why do we catch colds? What causes seasons to change? And if you...
Shapeshifters
A Journey Through the Changing Human Body
Language: English
Release Date: June 5, 2018
From birth to death, a lyrical exploration of the role of transformation in human life
To be alive is to be in perpetual metamorphosis: growing, healing, learning, aging. In Shapeshifters, physician and writer Gavin Francis considers the inevitable changes all of our bodies undergo--such as...
Red Rover
Inside the Story of Robotic Space Exploration, from Genesis to the Mars Rover Curiosity
Language: English
Release Date: March 12, 2013
For centuries humankind has fantasized about life on Mars, whether it’s intelligent Martian life invading our planet (immortalized in H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds) or humanity colonizing Mars (the late Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles). The Red Planet’s proximity and likeness to...
Mirror, Mirror
A History Of The Human Love Affair With Reflection
Language: English
Release Date: April 28, 2009
As our first technology for contemplation of the self, the mirror is arguably as important an invention as the wheel and perhaps even more universal. Mirror Mirror is the fascinating story of the mirror's invention, refinement, and use in an astonishing range of human activities-from the bloodthirsty...
Not by Chance Alone
My Life as a Social Psychologist
Language: English
Release Date: August 24, 2010
How does a boy from a financially and intellectually impoverished background grow up to become a Harvard researcher, win international acclaim for his groundbreaking work, and catch fire as a pioneering psychologist? As the only person in the history of the American Psychological Association to have...
The Monkey's Voyage
How Improbable Journeys Shaped the History of Life
Language: English
Release Date: January 7, 2014
How did species wind up where they are today? Scientists have long conjectured that plants and animals dispersed throughout the world by drifting on large landmasses as they broke up, but in The Monkey's Voyage, biologist Alan de Queiroz offers a radical new theory that displaces this passive view....
The Interpretation of Dreams
The Complete and Definitive Text
Language: English
Release Date: February 23, 2010
The standard edition of Sigmund Freud's classic work on the psychology and significance of dreams
What are the most common dreams and why do we have them? What does a dream about death mean? What do dreams of swimming, failing, or flying symbolize?
First published in 1899, Sigmund Freud's...
by Joseph Breuer, Sigmund Freud
Language: English
Release Date: June 16, 2009
Language: English
Release Date: June 16, 2009
The cornerstone of psychoanalysis-and legacy of the landmark Freud/Breuer collaboration-featuring the classic case of Anna O. and the evolution of the cathartic method, in the definitive Strachey translation. Re-packaged for the contemporary audience with what promises to be an unconventional foreword by Irvin Yalom, the novelist and psychiatrist who imagined Breuer in When Nietzsche Wept.
Retained by the People
The ""Silent"" Ninth Amendment and the Constitutional Rights Americans Don't Know They Have
Language: English
Release Date: August 1, 2007
The Ninth Amendment lurks like an unexploded mine within the Bill of Rights. Its wording is direct: The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” However, there is not a single Supreme Court decision based on it....